Free Computer!

Well, I suppose it helps being known as the computer geek in the family. Whenever someone else in the family has trouble with a computer, they call on me. (Yes, before you ask, it does cause headaches. The only thing I have going for me is the fact that computers don't seem to crash quite as often when I'm using them.)

Here's my little secret ... I leave the software in the locations I found them in. Every time a relative thinks it's time to tidy up their desktop ... If they feel they have too many icons on the screen ... They start creating new folders and stuff excess icons in them. So, the next time they need to start a program, the command lines to its components aren't valid. The program either won't run, or it will completely paralyze the computer.

That's essentially what happened to my grandmother's computer. When my cousins managed to get a virus on it, they (and quite possibly the virus, too) started deleting things at random. The end result was that the CD-ROM drive stopped working. It would not load an entire set of programs, and when you thought it would ... The system would completely freeze up.

There was an icon on the desktop, though, that said 'recovery.' It looked like one of those yellow 'sharp left curve' signs posted along two lane highways. I double clicked on that, and no more than two hours later, I had a fully functioning 60 gig hard drive with 480 meg of RAM and 2.13 GHz AMD Athlon processing!

Jinkies!

And all of that for not crashing copmuters as often as others in my family might!